Top 15 Ayọ Tometi Quotes

We know that it's increasingly more important to step up and stand for all Black lives, including queer and trans folks, and the international community have to play a role in this fight. It is fundamentally about all of our human rights; that includes folks on the continent and folks who are queer or trans.

We also believe that we cannot truly become free when marginalised Black communities are kept at the margins and are forgotten. We don't believe that there can be a trickle-down social justice. We believe that people on the margins must be brought centre.

We are now in a moment where people have no excuses to deny the injustice that's happening in the middle of a global pandemic. Things feel different this time because we were able to tap into a sense of our own agency, our own power and our genuine love for each other.

When you're sitting at home or living at a slower pace and you see that Black folks in your community are attacked, killed, murdered by vigilantes and by the police, you wake up, you rise to action, and you rise quickly.

People have begun to engage in mutual aid and support for their neighbours. Even if people didn't have much, they were still looking out for each other. Through this, we began to see the ways in which new webs were being constructed.

We finally had time to sit at home and reflect on how our society functions and whether or not it's functioning well for all of us. The overwhelming consensus was that it is not, it is insufficient – in fact, it's been unsustainable for decades, if not generations.

We are finally achieving a mass consciousness. We're seeing a widespread awareness and commitment to anti-racism that we have long needed. People are now alert and active because the pandemic demonstrated how interconnected our lives are.'''

I'm extremely gratified that people have heard and are taking ownership of Black Lives Matter. People now know that in their respective industries and countries, they have the responsibility to ensure that Black people are respected, protected and affirmed.

When we first started Black Lives Matter, I always knew that this needed to be a global movement and that we needed more people to participate. The issues of police brutality, extrajudicial killings and anti-Black racism requires everybody to pay attention. I knew from the beginning that the project was big, that the mandate was big and that, if we use new media and technology – social media, specifically – we could get the message out there to thousands, if not millions of people.

People are really trying to show up in this moment for black people, but I think they are also doing it because they have been mad for a minute, almost like this pandemic was a pause, and they were able to think about what would justice look like, and what is actually going on, and they have been able to reflect on what is going on. I think they have been not O.K. for so many years, and they are finally saying, “Hey, we are going to take it to the streets and say we are going to show up in solidarity with you.”

One thing I just want to underscore is that the world is watching us. We see these rallies in solidarity emerging all across the globe, and I have friends texting me with their images in France and the Netherlands and Costa Rica, and people are showing me that they are showing up in solidarity.

The evolution of policing was rooted in that. People recognize that. So their frustration is absolutely about the policing and the criminal-justice system writ large and the racial dimensions of it, and its lethal impact on our communities.

I absolutely think people are concerned with police brutality. Let me make that absolutely clear. We have been fighting and advocating to stop a war on black lives. And that is how we see it—this is a war on black life. And people understand that this system is filled with all sorts of inequality and injustice, and that implicit bias and just outright racism is embedded in the way that policing is done in this nation—and when you think about it historically, it was founded as a slave patrol.

People who would normally have been at work now have time to go to a protest or a rally, and have time to think about why they have been struggling so much, and they are thinking, This actually isn’t right and I want to make time, and I have the ability to make time now and make my concerns heard...

And so my belief and my view of these protests is that they are different because they are marked by a period that has been deeply personal to millions of Americans and residents of the United States, and that has them more tender or sensitive to what is going on.